Dr. Montgomery received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and an M.S. degree in Chemical Physics from Texas Tech University and a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Chicago in 2007. Upon completing a postdoctoral appointment at the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory in 2009, he joined the Florida Southern faculty as Assistant Professor of Chemistry and was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry in 2015.
Given that many of the solutions to today’s challenges, such as energy, the environment, disease, etc., will be met with engineering at the molecular and nanoscale, Dr. Montgomery’s research focuses on the properties of matter at the molecular scale and nanoscale. Using sophisticated computational methods, the ultimate goal is to elucidate experiments and guide engineers in the design of novel devices capable of exploiting the interesting phenomena that can result from the interactions of light with matter at these length scales.Given that many of the solutions to today’s challenges, such as energy, the environment, disease, etc., will be met with engineering at the molecular and nanoscale, Dr. Montgomery’s research focuses on the properties of matter at the molecular scale and nanoscale. Using sophisticated computational methods, the ultimate goal is to elucidate experiments and guide engineers in the design of novel devices capable of exploiting the interesting phenomena that can result from the interactions of light with matter at these length scales.
In regards to the nanoscale, Dr. Montgomery is interested in studying metallic nanostructures that exploit the electromagnetic field confinement and enhancement due to the excitation of surface plasmons at metal / dielectric interfaces for applications in chemical and biological sensors, optoelectronics, spectroscopy, medical imaging and treatment, etc. Recent projects involve the design and optimization of plasmonic crystals for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensors and the study of metallic nanoparticles for photothermal ablation of cancer cells.
While nanoparticles are small, they are still large enough to treat using classical methods. At the molecular scale, however, one must use quantum mechanics to accurately describe the properties of matter. Dr. Montgomery is interested in the development of efficient theoretical methods to calculate bound and resonance states for molecules using basis set optimization methods and iterative diagonalization techniques to solve the Schrodinger equation exactly (theoretical vibrational spectroscopy). He is also interested in using efficient electronic structure methods to calculate the electronic properties of molecules to help guide and elucidate experiments involving metal-organic-frameworks, catalysis, enantioenrichment and chiral catalysis, etc.